MetaFilter posts tagged with milkyway

Star light, star bright, how many stars can I see tonight?

filthy light thief — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 23:51:10 -0800

"The arc of the Milky Way seen from a truly dark location is part of our planet's natural heritage," said Connie Walker, and astronomer from the U.S. National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Arizona. Yet "more than one fifth of the world population, two thirds of the U.S. population and one half of the European Union population have already lost naked eye visibility of the Milky Way." In these areas, people are effectively living in perennial moonlight. They rarely realize it because they still experience the sky to be brighter under a full moon than under new moon conditions. "Reducing the number of lights on at night could help conserve energy, protect wildlife and benefit human health," astronomer Malcolm Smith of the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. One study found an increased risk of breast cancer for women living in areas with the most light pollution (abstract). Some communities are embracing their dark skies, such as the New Zealand community of Tekapo, possibly home to first "Starlight Reserve," waiting on UNESCO's official approval. Not sure where to look in the vast night sky? Follow some guidelines, or check the view in Chile, Queensland, Australia, or Texas.

Across The Night

Effigy2000 — Tue, 19 May 2009 13:32:58 -0800

A time lapse video of the night sky as it passes over the 2009 Texas Star Party in Fort Davis, Texas. The galactic core of the Milky Way is brightly displayed.

Make That A RASPBERRY Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster

EmpressCallipygos — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:55:16 -0800

Astronomers searching for amino acids in space have discovered something unexpected -- the center of our galaxy tastes like raspberries and smells like rum. Scans of the Sagittarius B molecular cloud near the galaxy's center have turned up a good number of ethyl formate molocules; ethyl formate smells a lot like rum, and is one of the components of the flavor of raspberries. However, alongside the ethyl formate molocules, they also picked up evidence of 50 other interstellar molecules in the vicinity of a new-formed star. The size and complexity of the ethyl formate molecules suggests that larger proteins could also form in space -- what they'll smell like, though, is anyone's guess.

Milky Way Transit Authority

homunculus — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:29:23 -0800

The Milky Way Transit Authority. [Via]

Dark Skies Awareness

homunculus — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 13:45:00 -0800

Time to turn off the lights. "Cities needlessly shine billions of dollars directly into the sky each year and, as a result, a fifth of the world's population cannot see the Milky Way. Malcolm Smith explains why a dark sky has much to offer everyone." [Via]

Sagittarius A*

Kronos_to_Earth — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 00:02:07 -0800

A sixteen year long astronomical study, led by Dr. Reinhard Genzel of the Max-Planck-Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, has provided what is considered to be the best empirical evidence yet of the existence of supermassive black holes, specifically one a relatively cozy 27,000 light years away.... "The stellar orbits [QT] in the Galactic Centre [QT] show that the central mass concentration of four million solar masses must be a black hole, beyond any reasonable doubt." A video describing the study; more photos and video here.

AKARI IR Sky map

nthdegx — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 04:15:01 -0800

The AKARI mission has produced the first infra-red sky map in over 20 years.

Hubble harvest 100 new planets

stbalbach — Thu, 01 Jul 2004 22:31:39 -0800

Hubble harvests 100 new planets during a 7-day sweep of the bulge of the Milky Way.. If confirmed it would almost double the number of known planets to about 230. "I think this work has the potential to be the most significant advance in discovering extra-solar planetary systems since the first planets were discovered in the mid-1990s."

Eating The Galaxy Next Door

brownpau — Tue, 04 Nov 2003 09:50:43 -0800

Nearer, My Galaxy, to Thee. The only thing I find more surprising than the discovery of a galactic collision-in-progress is the fact that a similar nearby galaxy had already been found last decade. I need to get up to date and throw out all my astronomy books which still cite the Magellanic Clouds as being our closest neighbors.

samsara — Wed, 07 Aug 2002 16:14:00 -0800

A computer aided simulation builds a spiral galaxy from its beginning. In all, 390,000 particles were placed in an arrangement similar to a newborn galaxy. The end result after three months is an event that is believed to take billions of years to occur. (animation)

Chief Typist — Thu, 20 Jun 2002 10:10:50 -0800

Feeling small or feeling big? 39 orders of magnitude that take you from the Milky Way to the proton in an oak leaf.

Tarrama — Wed, 30 Jan 2002 03:40:02 -0800

Power of Ten View the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. Then move through space towards the Earth in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. After that, begin to move from the actual size of a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally, into the subatomic universe of electrons and protons.